[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----OKLA., S.DAK., NEV., CALIF., WASH., USA

[Rick Halperin]

July 27



OKLAHOMA----stay of impending execution

Oklahoma court stays execution for man in woman's death


An Oklahoma appeals court has stayed the execution of a man convicted of 
killing a 24-year-old woman while a mandatory appeal of his conviction and 
sentence are pending.

The court on Tuesday issued the appeal for 49-year-old Albert Johnson.

District Judge Donald Deason set a Sept. 19 execution, but noted it will likely 
be years before Johnson is put to death.

A death penalty moratorium was issued while a grand jury investigated the 
delivery of the wrong drug for 2 lethal injections, the last of which was 
stopped by Gov. Mary Fallin after the wrong drug was discovered.

Attorney General Scott Pruitt said he will not ask for any executions for about 
five months following the grand jury's May report criticizing Fallin's then 
general counsel for encouraging the use of the wrong drug.

(source: Associated Press)






SOUTH DAKOTA:

SD Inmate Briley Piper Still Fighting Death Sentence With Habeas Appeal In 
State Court


Death row inmate Briley Piper was back in court last week in Deadwood. Piper is 
challenging his incarceration in the South Dakota State Penitentiary, saying 
his legal counsel was insufficient and he should have been allowed to withdraw 
his guilty plea.

Lawrence County State's Attorney John Fitzgerald says the hearing lasted all 
day July 21.

"At the conclusion of the hearing, a transcript of the hearing was ordered, and 
the judge gave us basically 60 days from last Thursday to produce our briefs to 
the court," Fitzgerald said. "Then reply briefs are due 15 days after that, so 
at that point the judge will issue a decision."

Briley Piper and 2 co-defendants murdered Chester Allen Poage on March 13, 
2000. Piper pleaded guilty in January 2001 and was sentenced to die. He 
appealed that death penalty, and in July 2011 he had a sentencing-phase trial 
in Rapid City. The jury unanimously sentenced him to death.

The South Dakota Supreme Court has upheld Piper's conviction and sentencing. 
Piper is still exhausting remedies under state law. If he fails to find relief 
there, he can start the federal appeals process.

(source: sdpb.org)






NEVADA:

Judge orders makeup for suspect with Nazi tattoos on trial for robbery


Jurors said they could not impartially judge a defendant with swastikas and 
other racist and anti-Semitic tattoos covering his face and neck - so the judge 
called in a cosmetologist.

District Judge Richard Scotti stopped jury selection for a Las Vegas trial that 
resumed Monday (July 25) after potential jurors said they could not see past 
the hatred inked into Bayzle Morgan's face and bald head, according to the Las 
Vegas Review-Journal.

A tattoo on his neck says "Baby Nazi." Under his left eye, there's a swastika; 
on the back of his head, an iron cross, the symbol of Nazi Germany. "Most 
Wanted," he proclaims on his forehead.

Morgan, 24, is accused of stealing a motorcycle at gunpoint, and he faces the 
death penalty in a separate case - the murder of a 75-year-old woman on oxygen, 
according to the newspaper.

But the law says defendants should be judged on the facts, not on their 
appearance. So when potential jurors last month declared that they could not 
get past the tattoos, prosecutors asked for camouflage, and Scotti called in 
the makeup artist.

It took 2 hours to hide the tattoos, the newspaper reported. At one point 
during jury selection Monday, the court paused for touch-ups because some of 
the makeup had rubbed off.

The makeup will be removed when the trial ends each day, and reapplied each day 
of the trial.

(source: The Gazette)






CALIFORNIA:

Death penalty reform is the answer for California


Dear Editor,

I'm writing in regards to your recent article on Proposition 62 and the 
argument for repealing the death penalty in California. I think we can all 
agree the system in our state is broken, yet ending death sentences is not the 
solution. The solution is to MEND, not END California's death penalty.

Each year, nearly 2,000 murders occur in California, of those about 15 result 
in death penalty sentences. With Prop 66 reforms, juries can still recommend 
the death penalty for criminals they've found guilty of committing horrific 
crimes and, in turn, those criminals will have their appeals heard within 5 
years. As it stands now, the most heinous criminals sit on death row for 30 
years, with endless appeals delaying justice and costing taxpayers hundreds of 
millions of dollars. Prop 66 will speed up the death penalty appeals process 
while ensuring that no innocent person is ever executed.

The death penalty in California is broken. Reform is the answer. The right 
thing to do is to vote NO on Prop 62 and YES on Prop 66!

-- Birgit Fladager, Stanislaus County District Attorney

(source: Letter to the Editor, Turlock Journal)






WASHINGTON:

John Reed's lawyer has questions about new charges in slaying of Arlington 
couple ---- New charges, which could carry the death penalty, raise questions 
for the attorney of John B. Reed, accused of aggravated murder for the slayings 
of his former Snohomish County neighbors.


The lawyer for accused killer John B. Reed has questions about his client's 
arrest in Mexico and the timing of new charges that could expose Reed to the 
death penalty or life in prison without parole in the slayings of an 
Arlington-area couple in April.

Jon Scott, an attorney with the Snohomish County Public Defender's Office, said 
Tuesday he was awaiting his client's return to Washington to discuss the new 
charges and learn more about Reed's arrest last week.

Prosecutors last Wednesday filed a new complaint accusing Reed, 53, of two 
counts of aggravated murder using a firearm in the deaths of 2 former 
neighbors. Reed was arrested the next day by Mexican authorities in the state 
of Sonora and taken to the U.S. border in Arizona, where Scott said he was 
turned over to U.S. Marshals.

The timing of the new charges is curious, Scott said, given that they increased 
the potential penalties against Reed a day before his arrest and return to the 
United States. Scott said Reed was also not given a hearing in Mexico.

It's his understanding that Mexican authorities just drove Reed to the border 
and dropped him off. The Snohomish County Sheriffs Office said last week Reed 
was expelled from Mexico for violation of that country's immigration laws.

A conviction for aggravated murder carries two possible penalties: the death 
penalty or life in prison without parole. Snohomish County Prosecutor Mark Roe 
has not announced whether he will pursue the death penalty.

"I have not been able to confirm a lot of what happened yet," Scott said. "But 
I do think it's curious, and I am going to be interested in the back story of 
how Mexico proceeded here."

Reed had initially been charged with 1st-degree murder.

Snohomish County Deputy Prosecutor Craig Matheson is out of town and was 
unavailable Tuesday. However, he told KING-TV last week the decision to file 
aggravated-murder charges was based on the multiple victims and the 
execution-style of the killings.

He acknowledged the timing could not have been better since extradition laws 
make it difficult to file harsher charges after a suspect has been extradited 
to the U.S.

Scott said Reed will likely appear before Arizona authorities in Tucson this 
week, although no hearing has been scheduled yet in Pima County Superior Court. 
If Reed chooses to fight his return to Washington, Scott said the Snohomish 
County Sheriff's Office will have to obtain a governor's warrant for his 
extradition.

Reed is in the Pima County Jail.

The new charges include new details into the county's case against Reed for the 
slayings of 2 neighbors April 11, when Patrick Shunn and Monique Patenaude were 
reported missing by friends. Reed reportedly had a property dispute with the 
couple.

Reed and his younger brother, Tony, fled to Mexico days after the killings. 
Tony Reed has since pleaded guilty to 2 counts of 1st-degree rendering criminal 
assistance and has been cooperating with authorities.

The new charges make it clear Tony Reed did not know about the killings until 
his brother drove him from Ellensburg to the Arlington-area community of Oso 
and showed him the bodies, which Tony Reed helped bury.

The charges allege the slayings were committed execution-style, with Reed 
shooting 46-year-old Monique Patenaude 3 times in the arm, neck and head. 
Shunn, 45, suffered a single, nearly point-blank gunshot wound to the neck and 
head, killing him instantly.

"This was the only injury of significance located on Patrick Shunn's body, 
leading to the inference that Shunn was shot before he had any ability to 
defend himself," the charges state.

The bodies were buried, Patenaude on top of Shunn, in a 4-foot-deep grave in a 
clear-cut section of the forest that police said they never would have found 
without Tony Reed's help.

Prosecutors say the brothers fled to Mexico with the help of their parents, who 
have also been charged in rendering criminal assistance.

(source: Seattle Times)






USA:

Sept. 11 prosecutors ask judge to accept 2,976 death certificates as evidence


A war crimes prosecutor on Tuesday asked the judge to put 2,976 death 
certificates of the people killed on 9/11 directly into the pretrial record, a 
request defense lawyers charged triggered a constitutional tripwire.

"We're offering them to prove that they died on that date as victims of the 
attacks on Sept. 11," prosecutor Ed Ryan told the judge, Army Col. James L. 
Pohl. They were under seal at least until a military jury is empaneled for a 
trial whose date is still uncertain.

Defense lawyers for the 5 men accused of orchestrating the Sept. 11, 2001 
hijackings said the law required witnesses to be questioned on each document's 
contents. Defense attorney Edwin Perry, representing alleged plot deputy Walid 
bin Attash, accused the prosecution of trying to "cut corners, do an end run 
around the 6th Amendment and Confrontation Clause" of the U.S. Constitution.

Ryan told the judge to use a different standard and conclude that the death 
certificates were business records entitled to a hearsay rule exception. He 
also called them "non-testimonial," not subject to cross-examination. 
Pre-admission of this "voluminous evidence" without challenge and before a jury 
selection would "streamline the presentation of evidence at trial, which will 
conserve precious judicial and military time and resources," his court filing 
said.

Tuesday offered a rare mention of the the victims of the worst terror attack on 
U.S. soil across 4 years of pretrial proceedings. The sides have mostly sparred 
over resources, the prisoners' ability to work with their lawyers and 
allegations of torture and information about the CIA black sites where the 
accused terrorists were held for 3 to 4 years before September 2006.

Court filings show the death certificates were created by seven or more 
different entities, mostly the New York City Medical Examiner's Office, which 
handled the remains of the dead recovered from Ground Zero. But the hijackers 
also crashed planes at the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania so the records 
included documents from the Commonwealth of Virginia, a Pennsylvania coroner 
and the Department of the Army, which provided a casualty report. In some 
instances, Ryan said, state judges declared a person dead where no remains were 
recovered.

To use them, the defense lawyers argued, prosecutors would have to stream 
coroners, perhaps circuit court judges and other original witnesses to the 
documentation through the war court to be questioned about each death 
certificate's contents. And it would have to happen at trial, with the jury 
seated.

One defender, Buffalo attorney Jim Harrington, told the judge that blacking out 
the circumstances and causes of death could meet the business record standard.

Each side argued that Justice Antonin Scalia's landmark 2004 opinion in 
Crawford v. Washington supported their argument on whether defense lawyers 
could or could not cross-examine the creator of a document.

No date has been set for the war crimes trial. Prosecutors are seeking the 
death penalty if alleged mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his 4 accused 
accomplices are convicted. When defense lawyers argued in another portion of 
the hearing for internal Pentagon memos on an unlawful influence motion, case 
prosecutor Bob Swann replied with, "2,976 men, women and children were 
summarily executed. Over 3,000 children were left fatherless, motherless or 
without grandparents."

(source: Miami Herald)